Yeltsin lost two fingers from his left hand as an 11-year-old after he stole two hand grenades from a storehouse and attempted to smash one open with a hammer. 5 Yeltsin poses with a lineup of ...

For all his shortcomings, Boris Yeltsin's accomplishments were far-ranging and unrivalled. ... The fuse exploded, and he lost two fingers from his left hand.

Boris Yeltsin was hailed as a defender of democracy when he ... At age 11, Yeltsin lost two fingers on his left hand while trying to take apart a grenade that he had stolen from an ammo dump. ...

Boris Yeltsin, the former president of Russia who died yesterday at 76, led his people out of the bondage of communism but was never to see the promised land of a thriving market economy and a state ...

Boris Yeltsin, who died Monday at the age of 76, was in many ways a paradoxical figure. ... The boy, who lost two fingers of his left hand when a grenade he was playing with exploded, ...

Only two days' reserves of grain and flour were left. Massive riots and a civil war seemed inevitable. Yeltsin and his young prime-minister, Yegor Gaidar, miraculously pulled the country out of this ...

2007-04-24 04:00:00 PDT Moscow-- Boris Yeltsin, the bearlike peasant who struck the deathblow that shattered the Soviet Union and served as the first president of the disorderly Russia that ...

Boris Yeltsin, who kicked the props ... Yeltsin left the party in 1990 and successfully re-invented himself as a democrat, ... saying without a "strong hand" the country would have disintegrated.